1: A Hallicrafters.... can't recall model No. These are not common sets. In fact I've only seen this one. The original finish looked like crap and on top of that was an unappealing gray color. It had been overhauled by Primitiveradiogod some time ago and then it sat on a shelf. Nobody even really looked at it and of course nobody offered to buy it either. So I took it home, took it apart and repainted it a sort of dark cranberry color. Once the paint cures I will give it a buffing down.

2: A 1959 EMUD model 910 console stereo.

Typical German set full of layered, rat's nested components and hordes of wiring. This is also a cheaper brand and for whatever reason they seem to have more issues than some of the more common sets like Grundig or Telefunken.

It had been sitting in storage for years and did not initially work. In fact I didn't really try it since I could see that the electrolytic caps were spewing chalky white stuff meaning they had shorted or otherwise bit the dust. The chassis has a bunch of delicate stuff up top like the ferrite rod and so forth thus it can't be sat on its top but rather tediously sat on its side to overhaul.

Recapping took about 5 hours. Initial testing and there was no audio. I found out why when I removed the chassis and got a MASSIVE jolt. One of the 50uF caps was not grounded and I received the full discharge from it. I nearly dropped the thing on the floor. I've had this issue repeatedly with German sets where on either end of the circuit are power resistors that from the factory were just a bit too small to handle the amount of current and burn out, thus removing grounds from B+. BOTH power resistors in the set were open. Once replaced with higher wattage units the set worked but when turned on volume, even all the way down was at full-blast.

The dumb reason? The left side has a THREE shaft pot. Balance, Volume and Ferrite rod. Usually there's a stack of two knobs that forms one control. On this one the center volume control knob had worked the set screw loose and was simply spinning loosely with the front balance knob. Tightening the knob solved the problem.

Meanwhile the cabinet, which although in good shape had a lot of scratches. I applied 2 applications of Novus plastic polish to the top. It works well on these german sets with their heavy, thick urethane finishes. I'll need to do this a few more times.

And its done. There were a lot of weird bugs with this one but I managed to get it all back up and running. A few passes with some plastic polishing compound and a lot of the scratches were removed from the finish. This style is very "in" these days and so we will have an easy time selling it.

Wow what a collection. I enjoyed looking at all you pics. TNX for posting (again). I have spent most of my time on comm receivers, but have done more with consumer receivers in the last couple years. Its been fun! Currently working on a WR8R which a a pretty big project.

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Great work, and the '55 Merc (Monterey?) looks like one my folks got brand new.

I would like to know more about your Bluetooth additions; your hardware/sources, pitfalls, any tips. Would this be a worthy new thread? I've found some info in searches, but not much in depth, or was I searching in the wrong forum?

_________________I'd rather be on the ground wishing I was in the air,than in the air wishing I was on the ground.

As far as adding bluetooth, I and another museum member this week have worked out a means to add bluetooth to hot chassis sets. I'll be testing that this week for reliability as it involved making a custom device and if it work I'll share that here. As for sets with transformers its easier. Just go on Amazon and buy some cheap-o bluetooth receivers. I found some for $3 each and they seem ok. These plug into a USB power cube or supply which you can get for $1 at the dollar store. You then run an input line from center tap of the volume pot, negative to negative of the same pot. If it has a phono input use that to switch over when you want to use the bluetooth. If it doesn't you can switch the RF stage of the set off by adding a switch between the far end of the Vol. pot and the RF can that it tends to go to. I add those to the rear of the set where you won't see them.

Anyway... another day, more radios...

1: A Newcomb amplifier. Push-pull 6V6s and very basic. Ruggedly built. One of the power resistors in the B+ supply was 50% off and thus AC hum was getting into the audio. After replacing the electrolytics and this resistor it sounded fine. Its a basic thing and the rest of the caps were ceramic dic thus those were all fine.

2: neat lil' Arvin radio in metal case. The case had the original paint that IMHO still looked very good. So it was waxed and cleaned up. It would be a pity to paint this one. Just a basic recap and a realignment and it was good to go.

3: Here is a new experiment to add bluetooth to hot chassis sets. Its been a problem adding this because the USB power supplies will inject a terrible AC hum into the audio and nothing we tried worked. One of our members is a senior engineer and devised a simple and cheap circuit that involves a small 110AC to 8VDC transformer, 2 diodes, a 10uF cap and a 3 leg transistor. I need to get some project boards but for now I soldered up the pieces and globbed it all in hot glue to keep things from moving around. Yes, its not great but I intend to use boards moving forward. This works VERY well and I get a clean signal with zero interference. I've been running the system on a radio for a day so far and nothing overheats or seems to fail so far.

This is the Fairbanks Morse set that is being used for the test, which was also restored. Someone else in the past had done most of the electrical stuff but the cabinet was falling apart thus it was re-glued and repaired.

1: Philco Transitone but in a not as common, more ornate looking wooden case. Someone had gone in and done the electronics. I simply cleaned up the finish. Car wax does wonders on old finishes.

2: A radio I restored... For ME and not the museum. Its a Westinghouse with an unusual chassis. I've only seen this kind of chassis construction a few times. The whole chassis is made out of plastic and to get it apart requires inserting a screwdriver blade in a slot in the front and pressing a button in the rear. Very odd.

I find that the organic strippers works pretty good on removing paint from Bakelite. I use one that supposedly made out of soybeans or something. It will probably dull them up but I find that using car wax will being back the shine.

Anyway, its been a tad bit slow. We had a donation come in, a pretty large Telefunken Concertino. I'd say this is another one of the German sets that somehow produces an amazing sound quality with not very much hardware. It uses a single EL84 for the output and yet there are 2 large woofers and 2 tweeters. The set produces a very deep, rich bass and with the tweeters it is literally room-filling. Recapping was a 1 hour affair. What took longer was that the volume pot was seized. This happens a lot with these, and in particular Telefunkens. The vol pot has a long shaft and is within a separate shaft that is used to turn the ferrite rod. As the tolerance on this when new was very tight the old grease inside hardens and in order to get it turning requires heating the shaft with a soldering iron, applying penetrating oil and gently working the control back and forth. Eventually the new oil will work its way through the old grease. But it took over an hour of doing this to get it free and easy to turn.

Here's one you don't come across often, an RCA 45 record player in Disney theme. I've seen these online before but not in person. The decals have over time yellowed a bit. Anyway, one of our members, Mike donated this to the museum. It was missing the mechanism. But we had the same model in a plain bakelite in storage and so I made the Disney one whole again. All of the rubber friction parts are warped. Since this will become a museum display piece I'll just leave it as it is. Otherwise it actually works. Cinderella came out in 1950 so its probably from around that era.

Its been kind of a sad few days for me over the loss of my friend Scott ( Primitiveradiogod) who helped me on a lot of these sets. So its been a little bit more slow going.

1: A typical 50's Zenith AA5. The case is slightly warped on top from heat from the tubes but otherwise cleaned up well.

2: Zenith h-845. These are one of my favorite radios from the 50's. They are surprisingly well made and I'd say that fully 75% of them will still work in totally stock original form. This was a set that Scott also appreciated and has helped me with in the past when one or two wound up having some weird issue. In fitting form this one also had a confusing problem where there was no B+ for 3 of the 4 electrolytics. A few evenings of hunting around and the culprit was a shorted resistor that though tested fine was in fact shorting. Usually I sell these for the museum but I bought this one for me and I will be keeping it. Its the first I've seen with a black enamel case.

This weekend I started work on a large Grundig console which is giving me a lot of problems. Inbetween working on that I would get frustrated and shift to the more familiar AA5 sets.

1: A neat GE clock radio donated by Mike, one of our members. It has a swirled Urea plastic case that was a bit scratched up. A few applications of Novus and it cleared up nicely. I might go over it with a final polish.

Otherwise its as plain and simple as apple pie. A handful of caps and its done. This era of GE LOVES to get silver mica disease but someone had replaced the RF/IF cans before thus it was fine. Good ole' Millers which are pretty reliable.

The ONLY "problem" I had was my own stupidity. When done I was getting absolutely no power to the chassis. Nadda. Zip. I tested the tubes, checked to ensure that yes- the switch on the clock was actually working, which it was... and then I saw a switch on the back of the chassis that I had missed. It turns the radio on or off if the user doesn't want that to come on when the alarm goes off. That was turned off. Problem solved..

2: Zenith with an unusual dial. I forgot to take underside pics but someone had been in there before and the work was pretty awful. Very long leads on everything and poor soldering. I snipped it all out and replaced everything else. The speaker had a tear which was fixed with RTF sealer.

Here's an unusual one: an Arvin 480TFM from 1950. My Aunt had the AM only version of this which she gave me years ago when I was a kid. I sold it years ago and always regretted it. So when this one came up at a swap meet for $10 I got it. As seen it was kind of grubby and gross initially.

I forgot to take pics of the top of the chassis but Its a rather neatly made, well built set. Its actually a transformer powered unit which means for a much cleaner sound especially on FM.

After recapping the chassis was cleaned up, the case was first cleaned and then gone over with in order: Bees wax, brasso and then several applications of caranuba ( car ) wax. The brass trim was also removed and cleaned up as were the knobs. For nasty knobs I have a small jar that I put in a small amount of ammonia and warm water. In 10 minutes 60-70 years of crud falls right off.

For an earlier FM set this one works VERY well. Its rare that a set as old as this one works as well on FM so clearly whomever the engineers were on this knew what they were doing. I think I'll keep this one as its a good example of FM.

I do too. I should take a pic of the upper part of the chassis. Its a small set but built more like a larger table set or console. And as mentioned FM performance is excellent. As in it will hold up just as well as a modern radio on FM.

Red-ish looking Motorola. Its painted either red or orange but the paint has faded. Maybe it sat in the sun. But I buffed it up and it looks kind of nice.

I saw this and thought, "wait - thats a New Zealand model!"... then I had to stop and think where I'd seen it before. There is one for sale on our NZ version of eBay (TradeMe) at the moment

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It was a 1955 model here - the Pacemaker 'Petit' - made by Collier and Beale, one of our bigger radio manufacturers. They look like they were cast from the same mold... although we have a few radios in NZ that were produced in cabinets where the dies came from previous models from other countries (We even have a Pacemaker version of the flip-front Zenith picnic radio)

I'd love to see these two radios side by side...

Steve

_________________There are no personal problems that cant be overcome with the liberal application of high explosives

Wow. I've never seen anything like it. The one I had ( its sold now ) had a logo from a plastics manufacture. I cannot for life of me recall the name but it certainly wasn't Motorola. I assume that they were simply a supplier. So I would assume the same company exported cases for the ones you have there, which could be certainly plausible.